


and like the dawn you woke

by Emamel



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fairy Tale Curses, Hopeful Ending, no beta we die like Renfri didn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel
Summary: Yennefer's portal didn't take her to Aretuza, but to a very different tower indeed.
Relationships: Renfri | Shrike/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 21
Kudos: 121
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #003





	and like the dawn you woke

**Author's Note:**

> this will probably be cleaned up an added to once the challenge is over, but i'm already pushing it for time

The ground beneath her back was cold and soft, and crunched faintly as she moved. There was no prickle of hay, no itch of muck in her hair, and when she finally screwed up enough courage to open one eye, the light was - all wrong.

Yennefer sucked in as much breath as her shaking chest could hold, and pushed herself upright. 

She had seen snow before, of course she had; but never anything like this. It was pristine - almost as far as she could see, it glinted in the soft sunlight, completely undisturbed by footprints. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen - and it was utterly impossible.

Slowly, painfully slowly, she gathered her feet under her and stood. She was cold, she realised, cold enough for her teeth to clatter together and gooseflesh to prickle the skin of her arms. She'd been dressed for a warm spring day, and her dress offered no shelter from the chill.

A dream - it had to be a dream. That made sense, of course. She'd fallen back in the barn, had probably hit her head hard enough to knock her out like Josef's father had last year, and now she was dreaming this wonderful place where there were no people to push her down for trying to help with the animals, or rocking her sister to sleep, or trying to return a daisy cast aside. It was the sweetest dream she'd ever had, and her heart twisted at the thought of waking from it to find herself on her pallet that was more full of lice than straw these days.

Maybe she'd never wake up - maybe she'd hit her head so hard she'd waste away, trapped inside her dream, and when she died she wouldn't even notice. Maybe she could -

"I wasn't expecting guests."

The voice was quick, and sharp, and curled around the vowels with a clever twist. Yennefer froze at the sound, and swallowed heavily, before turning to look for the woman that had spoken.

"And usually they try to come through the front door," she continued, still hidden from Yennefer's view.

"I - I don't know how I got here," Yennefer called. Her eyes started to burn, though whether from the brightness of the snow or from her tears, she couldn't be sure. Where she had landed, the snow had started to melt through her dress, chilling her to the bone.

There was a considering hum, this time from directly behind her, and when Yennefer whirled unsteadily around, a woman stood there watching her with dark, shrewd eyes.

She was beautiful - even Yennefer, who had never ventured further than her father's small fields bordering the woods, knew that she must be the most beautiful woman in the world. Her head was held high, even as she tilted it curiously; her tangled hair brushed her shoulder, gleaming in the weak winter sun like fresh-polished wood.

"Well," the woman said, brisk and light. "I'm not an expert, but it looked to me like you portalled in. Didn't know that was possible, so congratulations."

"A portal?" Yennefer's breath came short and fast, clinging to her throat and misting the air. “That’s - why would you do that to me?”

The woman snorted, and waved a long hand.

“ _I_ __ didn’t,” she said, as though it should have been obvious. She was still staring at Yennefer, brows furrowing over her dark eyes. “From the look on your face, though, I’m guessing you don’t have any idea  _ how _ that happened. Magic usually goes a little…” She hesitated, glancing around. Yennefer followed her gaze, to the water fountain frozen solid, the bare trees, the withered remains of what may once have been flowerbeds.

“It usually goes a little wrong, around me,” she finished at last. “You’re lucky you made it here in one piece.”

The woman turned her back to Yennefer and started heading for the edge of what must have been a garden - she settled herself on the low wall, back resting against a pillar and one knee pulled up to her chest. After a couple of trembling breaths, Yennefer hurried after her. She didn’t know where she was, but perhaps it wasn’t safe to be there alone.

“What is this place?” Yennefer asked, scrambling up to sit a few feet away. The climb pulled at her shoulder, and her hands, even calloused as they were, began to tear against the stone. The woman watched silently, and without pity in her stare. Her fingers drummed a senseless pattern against her knee - there was a restless energy about her, as though she was always on the verge of pouncing. She put Yennefer in mind of the mouser her neighbours kept, that could leap from the fencepost and snatch a bird from the air.

Did that make Yennefer the bird? Or was she too far beneath the woman’s notice even for that; little more than a biting flea, a slight irritation that was forgotten a moment later?

“It used to be called Irion’s Tower, but I don’t know if it still is. I have no idea how long I’ve been here,” the woman said, running a thumb along the rough stitching of her trousers. They looked like they had been patched and darned by deft, if inexpert hands more times than Yennefer cared to count - but the fabric was fine, finer than any she had seen before. Her tunic was dyed a rich, blood red, and her cloak looked too thin and too short to offer any protection from the cold - despite that, she neither shivered, nor rubbed her arms for warmth like Yennefer.

“How am I supposed to get back?” Yennefer asked, gripped by a sudden dread. How long  _ had _ this woman been here, if not by her own design? Would Yennefer be trapped here too, in the impossible snow and biting winds? “I can’t - I can’t  _ stay  _ here, I need to get back!”

The woman watched her; watched as she curled down into herself and bit back the tears and words that threatened to flood her. Maybe they would be enough to bring some warmth to her face - or maybe they would freeze to her cheeks before they could fall. She couldn’t stay here - she  _ couldn’t.  _ The steady light was all wrong, wasn’t anything like any sunlight she had ever seen, and it was still so cold even sheltered against the building. Her thin shoes had soaked through, and she couldn’t feel her toes anymore. Yennefer didn’t know much about frostbite except that Karolina had lost three toes to it a few years back. How long did it take? She couldn’t lose her fingers and toes - it was already hard enough to carry the pig food and patch her siblings’ clothes. She couldn’t afford to lose the few ways she could still make herself useful.

“Got something to go back to, Bright Eyes?” Her voice was cutting.

Yennefer flinched - she couldn’t help it. It was a guess, but a cruelly good one.

There wasn’t anything for her to go back to, not really, but there wasn’t anything for her here, either.

Something about the woman softened, though, and the pinch of her lips gentled until her expression could almost be mistaken for a smile. She would be even more beautiful if she looked happy, Yennefer thought, and then flinched again, this time at herself.

“You could try the front door,” she said, and her eyes were gentler now than Yennefer would have thought possible. She tilted her head further back into the shadow of her hood, until they were almost obscured, as though ashamed. “It’s never worked for anyone else - but then, no-one else has ever managed to make it in here. I’d hurry, though. You don’t want to still be here when the mage realises that something went wrong with his spell.”

Yennefer nodded; hesitant at first, and then frantic. She didn’t know where the tower was - there was nothing like it for a hundred miles of Vengeberg, she was sure, but wherever it was, she would be better off outside it.

The woman hopped down from the wall and landed so lightly that Yennefer was surprised to see footprints left behind in the snow.

“Come on then, Bright Eyes,” she called over her shoulder. Yennefer scrambled back down, tearing at her hands again and ripping the hem of her dress. She didn’t care, though - if it meant getting out of there, she would suffer far worse than a few scrapes and tears.

The door was somehow both more and less than Yennefer had expected - large, and grand, certainly, but it appeared to be nothing more than plain wood at a first glance. The metal looked as though it would be too cold to touch without losing a layer of skin, and there was such a thick layer of ice crusting the hinges that Yennefer wasn’t surprised no-one could use them. She turned to say something to the woman, to ask if she had anything they could use to break the ice, but before she could, chilled hands settled against her shoulders. 

Even against the frigid wind, even through her dress, Yennefer could feel the cold that rolled from the woman’s skin. Her entire face shifted as she smiled, and Yennefer’s heart may as well have been frozen too as she leant forward to dust a kiss against her forehead.

“Good luck out there,” she said, and before Yennefer had time to blink, she had pushed her back, through the glamoured entrance and out into the sun behind her father’s barn.  
  


*

Portals weren’t something taught in the first year at Aretuza, but with Istredd’s help, Yennefer would learn. The feainnewedd was sharp and as cold as a snowflake caught on her tongue - but the portal was large enough to step easily through, and the woman’s face when Yennefer stepped through was enough to settle the racing of her thoughts.

“Back so soon, Bright Eyes?” She asked, her mouth curled into a small, secret smile. Yennefer smiled back, because for the first time, it was a secret that had been  _ shared _ with her.

  
*  
  


“I’m Yennefer,” she said, many months later; stood beside the glamoured doors, but lingering still. “I don’t think I ever told you.”

The woman laughed at that, head tipped back to display her throat against a wild halo of dark curls. The strange light that wasn’t quite sunlight but wasn’t quite anything else either caught the red in it, until she looked as warm as a bonfire.

“No, I don’t think you ever did,” she agreed. “I’ll always think of you as Bright Eyes, if that’s not a problem. It suits you better than Yennefer of Vengeberg, Aedirn’s pet mage.”

Pushing the sting of hurt aside, Yennefer could only shake her head.

“You don’t know that I’ll be sent to Aedirn,” she said. It was what she hoped for, what she would work towards until she could finally ascend, but that didn’t mean anything. It was well known that King Virfuril preferred to keep a sorceress from his own kingdom, but it was just as well known that he wouldn’t turn away anyone that he considered young and pretty enough to grace his courts.

The smile Yennefer received in reply was a strange thing - small, her lips pressed together until they turned white. Eventually, she shrugged and looked away.

“I don’t need to know to be sure,” she said at last. Her eyes flickered to something over Yennefer’s shoulder, and they hardened again, turned cold as the wind that was a constant companion in this place. “You should go, Yennefer of Vengeberg, Aedirn’s pet mage.”

“I’m no one’s mage yet, and certainly not their  _ pet,” _ Yennefer snapped, unable to help herself. The woman blinked, as though shocked, and a little of her usual fire bled back into her expression.

“Maybe not,” she murmured after a second. “Remember that, then, Bright Eyes.”

Yennefer almost turned her back then, almost walked away through the doors and back to Aretuza - but there was something she still needed to ask first.

“Who are you?” She demanded. “All this time, and you’ve only told me who this tower used to belong to, which means nothing as the wizard Irion has been dead for centuries. Why are you here, what  _ happened _ to you?”

The woman didn’t smile, as much as she bared her teeth.

“It doesn’t matter much, anymore,” she said. “But if you need something, to call me, then Shrike will do.”

She spun on her heel and stalked away through the blanket of snow, and Yennefer watched her go until she turned the corner and was gone from sight.

  
*  
  


Aretuza consumed Yennefer’s time and thoughts, but every time she stepped through her portal, Shrike was waiting for her, as though she had known she would be coming. 

  
*  
  


“He betrayed me,” Yennefer hissed, and Shrike hardly glanced up from the book Yennefer had brought her last month. 

“That was his mistake, then,” she said calmly, and the fire it lit in Yennefer’s chest  _ blazed _ .

  
*  
  


Her duties at Aedirn kept her almost too busy to think, in the beginning. She had learnt magic, and politics, and court etiquette at Aretuza until she could recite them all in her sleep - and sometimes had, if Shrike was to be believed - but it hadn’t done much to prepare her for the reality of life as a court mage. She may as well have just blinked, and two years had passed without a visit to the tower.

Shrike had thrown bricks from one of the crumbling walls until she had fled, mouth twisted in fury and eyes burning with shame and humiliation. It hadn’t been enough to stop Yennefer returning for days after, through the sullen silence and furious snarling.

She understood, and went back the next day, and the next, until at last Shrike calmed enough to sit beside her, though her hands still shook. When Yennefer took hold of one, it was colder than she had ever felt.

“I used to be a princess, you know,” Shrike said finally. Her voice didn’t tremble; but it was cold, and flat. 

Yennefer didn’t ask why she was telling her this, after years of nothing. Maybe Shrike herself wasn’t sure - her eyes were somewhere a long way away.

“But I hadn’t been her for years, even before I came to the tower,” she continued. Her shoulders started to lift up towards her ears, breaking the posture that Yennefer realised had never been anything less than perfect, even when she relaxed against the walls or forgot herself in a fit of mirth. “My stepmother, may she rot, convinced your precious Brotherhood that I was cursed - it’s almost funny, you know. I was born under a black sun, and now here I am, never to feel the warmth of daylight again.”

Yennefer cast a confused glance at her.

“The prophet that spoke of Lilit’s girls was mad,” she said at last. “All of the Brotherhood knows that - he hasn’t been credible for centuries.”

Shrike laughed, a hollow bark of sound.

“Oh, I know,” she said, lip curling. “But she could be convincing enough, when she wanted, and none of the mages wanted to risk an upheaval of power the likes of which he predicted, so -”

“Is that why you can’t leave here?” Yennefer asked. She had inspected the spells woven deep into the tower’s foundations years ago, and found them as strong now as they must have been the day they were cast. A simple glamour, layered over with a strange trap spell, the likes of which she had never seen before. There were other threads too, magic that Yennefer was utterly unfamiliar with, and all around Shrike they warped strangely, twisting tight about her throat and tangling in her fingers.

“I was tricked,” Shrike corrected. “I tracked the man that had been chasing me, the mage your Brotherhood sent that believed I was some sort of monster. He lured me here, and I believed I could draw him out, that I could kill him finally for everything he and his men had done to me, but when I got here, the tower looked - abandoned. I thought he must have fled, that he must have realised what I was planning and didn’t trust the tower’s wards to keep me out. I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I crossed the threshold - I think the spell was supposed to kill me, but magic has always gone wrong around me, and now here I am. Trapped until the old bastard dies, or I do, I suppose.”

Shrike hadn’t aged at all in the years Yennefer had known her. She didn’t know if anyone would really be able to die in this place, not as it was, but she thought it unlikely.

But curses always followed the same sort of rules, and once you knew the shape of them, it was a simple enough task to break any spell you came across. And the older mages of the Brotherhood were sticklers for tradition - it was unlikely that whoever had cast the spell over the tower had done so with any imagination at all. Even with the strangeness of the extra spells, even with the way it interacted with Shrike.

Yennefer leant over and kissed her.

It wasn’t her first kiss - nor her second, or third, nor any kiss that she otherwise would have counted, except that it felt like all of the others and more besides. Shrike’s mouth was cold and still as marble against her, and for a second they remained suspended; frozen, Yennefer thought, and would have laughed to herself, had Shrike not gripped the collar of her dress and yanked her close.

The hand she placed on Yennefer’s cheek was still as cold as ice when they separated.

“It was a good idea,” she said, with a chill laugh that Yennefer could feel against her open mouth. It had lasted barely a handful of seconds, but she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “If I had been anyone else, it might have even worked.”

“If you had been anyone else, you wouldn’t be in this situation,” Yennefer snapped. “There  _ is _ a way to break the curse, that’s the point of curses - none of them are designed to last forever, and there’s always a way to break them.”

“Well,” Shrike said, and smiled that little smile of hers, that was both a secret shared, and a new one created. “If anyone can figure it out, it’ll be you, Bright Eyes.” Her thumb swept across the arch of Yennefer’s cheek.

“But in the meantime, I don’t think it would hurt to try again.”


End file.
